How China Mistreated an Old Friend

LONDON— Filming has just finished in China of a new movie about Mao Zedong and the American journalist Edgar Snow, whose book "Red Star Over China," published in 1938, made Mao internationally famous by predicting that before long he would rule China. Song Jiangbo, the director of the film "Mao Zedong and Snow," said recently that it "highlights the friendship between Mao and Snow."

But just as he said this, Lois Snow, Edgar's widow, was being brutally snubbed in Beijing. Even by the standards of their usual contempt for international and Chinese opinion, what the Beijing authorities did was appalling.

It reveals how much they are willing to sacrifice to try to keep the lid on the killing of pro-democracy activists around Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989. The treatment of Mrs. Snow is a devastating comment on President Jiang Zemin's 1997 judgment about Tiananmen: "Much ado about nothing."

The Chinese communists have never had a better "foreign friend" than Edgar Snow. In 1970 Mao signaled to President Richard Nixon that he wanted to end years of enmity by posing with Edgar Snow and Lois — overlooking Tiananmen. Half of Mr. Snow's ashes are buried in Beijing. The Chinese authorities have sometimes reminded American journalists to emulate Edgar Snow.

Mrs. Snow said in a letter to Prime Minister Zhu Rongji that she always shared her husband's devotion to the Communist government. But she vowed never to return to China after Tiananmen. Nonetheless, last week she did.

She said that she had two reasons for visiting Beijing: to visit her husband's grave and to see Professor Ding Zilin at the People's University. Mrs. Ding, whose 17 year-old son was killed in the Tiananmen suppression, has been conducting a nationwide campaign to find out the identities of all those who died that night. The police maintain constant surveillance on her house, and the Ministry of State Security has frozen the money she has received from abroad for the families of those killed in 1989.

Mrs. Snow, who was traveling with her son Christopher, said that she was making "a visit from a mother with her son to extend sympathy to a mother who has lost her son and to bring her whatever solace we can. It is also a gesture of solidarity with the other mothers and families who, more than 10 years ago now, had their loved ones taken from them in the violence of Tiananmen."

Despite her husband's stature in China, Mrs. Snow was treated callously. She was pursued by police cars to the People's University, cut off by the cars at the entrance and filmed by the police as she attempted to enter. Then she was turned away.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Ding's house was surrounded by police officers who ordered her to stay inside. "I said, 'How can you be so cruel?"' Mrs. Ding said later. "'She's an old friend of China."'

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Mrs. Snow immediately wrote to Mr. Zhu. She told him that she had been prevented from entering the People's University campus because she needed permission from "higher authorities" and asked him for that permission. She reminded Mr. Zhu that Mrs. Ding had committed no crime and that China's position on human rights was being considered that very week at the UN's Human Rights Commission in Geneva.

The prime minister did not reply. He pretends disdain for Tiananmen. On the 10th anniversary of the massacre, when asked about it, he said, "I forgot all about it."

Edgar Snow himself usually avoided fundamental criticism of China. When he was there during the 1961 famine, the worst in history, he reported that it did not exist. In 1969 he wrote to Mao. "I have been for many years a firm supporter of your leadership," he said, adding that he had "been able to make known to the world the life and work of a revolutionary fully the peer of Lenin."

His widow is made of tougher moral stuff. As she was leaving China, she wrote a final letter. She said that Mrs. Ding's friend, Su Bingxian, who met Mrs. Snow when she was barred from the People's University campus, had been arrested and has not been seen since.